According to reports on Wednesday’s BBC Newsnight, Royal Mail is up for sale as of 07:00am on Thursday.
Expected to be valued at up to three billion pounds, the exact price and details of how the sale will work will become clear soon. Much of the small print has been a mystery hitherto but we do know 10% will be made available to staff.
Privatisation has been coming for some time, price changes (especially increased parcel prices) earlier in the year were one thing the Royal Mail did to make it a more attractive purchase to investors. A debt deal today was also part of that.
There has also been speculation that chunks of the stock could be snapped up by an overseas postal firm such as the German Postal service Deutsche Post.
The TUC (Trades Union Congress) currently meeting in Bournemouth is against the sale and the CWU (Communications Workers’ Union), which is in the process of balloting members who work at Royal Mail on strike action, is bullish and predicts industrial action. CWU deputy general secretary, Dave Ward said on Wednesday: “We have not gone through all of that pain to save the industry only to hand it over to private investors who will take more money out than they will ever put in.” Trades Unionists also issued a challenge to Labour to commit to renationalisation if the party takes power after the 2015 general election.
So, the bad news is that a Royal Mail strike is probably on the way in October. That’s not good for small business ecommerce sellers and it’s well worth planning now to mitigate the problems that are likely to occur.
As for privatisation, we at Tamebay still think the same. Privatisation in itself doesn’t solve the many problems that Royal Mail has. Access to private capital, freedom to innovate and focus better on customer needs is vital and the Government can provide that without flogging off a vital public service. On a personal note, as I consider my gas bill or deal with BT, I don’t feel the promise of privatisation delivers on price or service in the long run.
19 Responses
Oh goodie Christmas strikes again 🙁
like the public mood for military strikes on syria , union activists may just get the message from royal mail workers that strikes are pointless and achieve nothing other than further problems
even now the very talk of strikes will be costing royal mail jobs because like ourselves many will be actively checking out the alternatives ,
Lets hope the Germans by it, we might have a decent postal system then!
And so it starts….
Planned industrial action at Weston-super-Mare Delivery Office (BS22 – BS24) – today, Thursday 12th September
Royal Mail is disappointed that members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU) are taking industrial action at Weston-super-Mare Delivery Office today.
Managers and other volunteers will be delivering to as many customers as possible, ensuring all priority mail – including Special Delivery™ and Tracked items™ – and as many parcels as possible are delivered. They will also be collecting from all Post Office® branches and as many post boxes as possible, although collection times may vary from usual. We are sorry we cannot guarantee collections from business customers today; business customers may prefer to take their mail to a Post Office® branch before 16:00hrs.
So you’re shipping maybe 100 tracked parcels today and your local Post Office is going to welcome you with open arms?
Only yesterday a rep for a courier company was in here after our business. For now I stayed with Royal Mail , but strike action will probably swing it
This Government really are a bunch of clowns aren’t they?
How can a company with assets of some £20bn be worth just £3bn?
If I had £3bn laying around I’d buy Royal Mail and asset strip it.
You don’t think anyone else who actually has £3bn has thought of that though do you? :-/
And as for the CWU… ‘the union is seeking a better deal on pay and conditions for Royal Mail’s workforce than the 8.6% basic pay rise offered’ (over 3 years)…
8.6% over 3 years?? Not enough? What planet are they on??
I will certainly be buying shares.
And voting to sack any employee who strikes.
It will be very interesting to see who is interested in buying Royal Mail over the next 2 weeks. Perhaps Ebay will buy it and give all sellers who use the service a huge discount? yes I am dreaming haha 🙂
It’s £750 minimum investment unless you work for Royal Mail (in which case it’s £500). However they aren’t giving away a selling price which means you can only put in an offer for the number of shares you’d like. I wonder if some people are going to end up with scary bills for shares they undervalued?
My share of Royal Mail is worth about £380 (£2.3billion divided by 60million population).
Quite frankly £2.3billion will make no difference to the country’s finances and if the government sent every man woman and child a cheque for £380 they’ve have the whole country supporting the sell off…
…which just goes to show how cheaply people can be bought and why they’re hoping that the 10% of shares sop to posties will convince them that some corporation making them redundant next year is worthwhile.
chances are the political activists at royal mail will get a shock if a strike goes ahead
they may just find out how much royal mail wont be missed by many